The Fiddle and the Drum

Songwriter John Richards attempts to untangle the threads of traditional music ... but will we ever know the answer to that burning question 'What is Folk?'

Archive Post

First published in the original Folk21 blog, January 2015

I’d like to raise some points that lead to questions about pigeon holing and definitions within folk and roots music. 

This is not a ‘What is folk?’ discussion so please let’s not get bogged down by that but I do think this demonstrates just how very difficult the question is and how blurred some of the lines actually are.

I wonder how people perceive traditional music and how many traditions they encompass in their consideration.

I also wonder if people consider traditional music to be music from history, and from a particular period in the past.

Let’s consider some of the history.

Back in 1650 some 40,000 Irish were sent as slaves by Cromwell to work the plantations in the Caribbean alongside black slaves from Africa.

The Irish took the fiddle to the plantations and the Africans had brought with them the predecessor of the banjo. The Irish and Black slaves shared music, dancing and singing which were later to have a substantial effect on music in America and the UK and Ireland.

I believe that some early English music was sung unaccompanied, as with work songs including shanties, while other early music was played or accompanied by Pipe, Tabor, Bagpipes, Shawm, Hurdey Gurdey or Crumhorn. Then in 1829 the English concertina was added to the options for accompaniment.

European settlers in big numbers had been heading for America since the 17^th Century and had taken amongst other instruments early guitars from Europe, fiddles from Scotland and Ireland, the cittern from England and many tunes and songs and stories.

P.J. Curtis*, the award winning record producer and radio presenter, says in his book Notes from the Heart - A celebration of Irish Traditional Music: 

The tradition of white singers and dancers blacking up goes back to around 1750 when an itinerant troupe of actors and musicians called the Ethiopian Delineators were shipped to Kentucky from the Caribbean to entertain the elite and well to do of that state. The group were neither Ethiopian nor African nor indeed European. They were in fact Irish migrants, just off the boat and desperate to make a living. They did so by blacking their faces, strumming banjos, an instrument hitherto unknown in the New World, and dancing a step dance that was a hybrid of an African foot stomp and an Irish jig. And so the black faced minstrel was born and from 1750 on, the Irish were to dominate the tradition right up to the early part of the century.

"The Irish simply blacked up" writes the black scholar and playwright Leni Sloan, "disguised themselves as Afro Americans and became one of the first generations of American minstrels."

This led eventually to such minstrel shows touring America, the UK and Ireland and even a long running TV programme in England, the Black and White Minstrel Show. You’ll remember from above that Irish and Black slaves had worked together and shared music and dance together on the plantations.

The first banjo and fiddle duet was allegedly played by slaves in 1774 but somehow the banjo also found its way to the mountains and old time music developed during the 19^th century with fiddle and banjo prevalent.

In 1830 C.F. Martin arrived in New York from Germany to start making American guitars which had developed from earlier gut strung guitars in Europe but were now using steel strings and heavier bracing to get a much fatter sound.

The 19^th century saw enormous developments in use of the guitar and also American roots music with the black folk and spiritual singers and the development of the blues, while the guitar also arrived in old time music towards the end of the 19^th century.

Throughout this time folk songs from the UK and Ireland had been sung by the settlers in America and had travelled to various areas and often changed slightly as they were passed on orally and arrived in new areas.

The second half of the 19^th century saw the Child Ballads (collected by Francis J. Child) published and the collection of songs from the UK with American variants emerged.

The first British folk revival from 1890 to 1920 had strong political influence with the British striving to create a more nationalistic music and to dilute some of the previous popularity of German composers, and the government encouraging the provision of folk music in education. The first revival was criticised though for being weighted in favour of rural songs, missing out urban work songs and shanties and also avoiding and bowdlerising the erotic songs of the time.

In the 1920s, Cecil Sharp was collecting songs in the Appalachian Mountains and the earlier invention of sound recording equipment meant that other collectors had created field recordings to provide more accurate versions (than notation provided) of performances. There were a number of other very influential collectors active in the UK and the USA during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The 1920s also saw the development of the phonograph and the start of record production of countless blues, old time, country and folk artists.

The 1930s and 1940s saw the emergence of the hugely influential Woody Guthrie, travelling round a very depressed America in the 1930s and then later becoming part of the emerging New York scene with his friends, including Pete Seeger, while later becoming a hero and figurehead for the newly developing American folk revival.

All collections were drawn upon extensively by singers and musicians during the UK Folk Revival of the 1950s and subsequently with Ewan MacColl, as an example, recording a large number of the Child Ballads and A.L. Lloyd adding other dimensions to the genre.

The greatest initial influences in the UK on guitar came from Burl Ives, Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy in the 1940s and early 1950s and then we moved into the Skiffle craze as the 1950s progressed.

The second UK folk revival which started in 1945 was very different from the first; it followed a similar revival in America, was often overtly left wing and included the work songs, shanties and erotic songs that the previous revival had shied away from. The American Revival had seen folk music enjoying mainstream success with Pete Seeger and The Weavers and others until the 1950s left wing persecutions pushed it back into minority interest again. There was resurgence in the later 1950s with The Kingston Trio enjoying success, a number of similar bands emerging and then the Greenwich Village scene and the emergence of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and their contemporaries. This American revival was truly eclectic with a number of different threads of roots music involved in the generic folk scene.

In the UK in 1959 Davey Graham changed the face of the guitar in folk music forever. He was a brilliant finger style guitarist who invented the DADGAD open tuning but his roots were not just in folk, he was a master of the blues, ragtime, jazz and classical guitars and he went on to influence a long line of superb English guitarists with Bert Jansch, John Renbourne and Martin Carthy (to name just three) all very highly influential.

                                                                             Davey Graham and Bert Jansch

Of course, in America, Bob Dylan was finding his way to Greenwich Village by now before becoming an enormous influence on so many people with his writing and performance.

Some years later in Ireland in the late 1960s a friend of Johnny Moynihan who was in Sweeney’s Men with Andy Irvine, brought back a bouzouki from Eastern Europe suggesting that Johnny might like to use it in the band. This gave rise to the Irish Bouzouki, the flat back, which proved to be a wonderful instrument for accompanying tunes and has been seen in countless bands subsequently.

So in conclusion, from the 17^th century on, traditional music, songs and instruments from the British Isles and Europe travelled to America, and subsequent developments continued to travel to and fro influencing people on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond; In 1650 Cromwell sent Irish slaves to work alongside black slaves, who had brought the early versions of the banjo to the Caribbean plantations, The Irish and black salves shared their music and a blacked up band of Irish musicians arrived in America with the banjo for the first time in 1750. 

Slaves and Mountain men started to utilise fiddles and banjos in duets, then in 1830 C.F. Martin arrived from Germany to make steel string guitars and the guitar emerged in blues, old time, folk and country music; In the second half of the 19^th century came the collection of the Child Ballads; then came the build-up to the First World War and the British government’s efforts to collect and promote English Music as opposed to Germanic composers, so Cecil Sharp and other collectors drove the first British folk revival; then came Woody Guthrie (who listened as a child to his mother singing ballads learned from her family (learned before the clearances and their journey to America), Pete Seeger and friends and the labour movement in America; then Pete Seeger and The Weavers popularised folk music in America as the folk revival began but the generic popularity of the music was badly damaged by the Communist witch hunts; then in the 1940s Skiffle developed, the second  British folk revival started with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, and then came the later developments of Davey Graham’s ground breaking guitar playing in the late 1950s, then the writing and enormous influence of Bob Dylan and then Johnny Moynihan’s Irish Bouzouki in the late 1960s; and we haven’t even mentioned folk rock and the enormous Fairport influence from the 1960s onwards, nor the singer songwriters and the artists that mixed music and comedy that regularly filled folk clubs in the 70s 80s and 90s.

I hope by now that any of you not entirely familiar with the history of the genre can see the complicated developments in traditional folk and roots music over the centuries. Global instrument influences, exchanges of music, songs and instruments, between America and the UK and Ireland and as recently as the 1950s and 1960s the addition of two new styles of accompaniment, the Davey Graham guitar influence and the Johnny Moynihan bouzouki influence. Is it any wonder that the ‘What is Folk?’ question can’t be answered by a short definition.

So shouldn’t we all be  open minded when it comes to considering traditional and contemporary folk and roots music and also British and American music and the way each has influenced the others and realise that the tradition has seen a lot of inputs, a lot of exchanges and a lot of developments that have made it what it is today which is not historic music from a defined period in time but a style of music ‘Of the people, by the people, for the people’ that has continued, and will continue, to develop.

As a songwriter I have always had great interest in this and I believe that like the instruments that were added along the way some contemporary songs already have, and new ones can potentially, become accepted in time as a part of the tradition. That has happened with songs from Woody Guthrie, Ewan McColl, Pete Seeger, and a long list of other songwriters and to write songs that are contemporary and relevant to the lives of ordinary working people now but which could also form a very small part of a magnificent cannon of song that might be sung in 100 years’ time and more is something that I will always continue to strive for, it remains my driving aim.

And when it comes to the eternal and infernal ‘What is folk?’ question the answer, in my opinion, (apart from “It’s complicated” 😊) is, that it will be defined by the people who are involved in the folk movement. If organisers like the music of a particular act and feel that it fits with their philosophy they may well book the act and if audiences enjoy the act they will turn up to watch them.

If it doesn’t fit and isn’t accepted and audiences don’t turn up to watch then the act won’t be playing folk venues for very long.

* PJ Curtis is/ was an award winning record producer and radio presenter, 33 albums by 1994 including Mary Black, Maura O’Connell, Stockton’s Wing and Dolores Kean, also work on the Altan albums.

Letting the artist know what they’re letting themselves in for.

Kim Lowings offers some good, practical suggestions from her steep learning curve when approaching folk venues to book her and The Greenwood.

Here is a follow up from my presentation at Folk 21’s West Midlands region annual meeting on January 28th. This was about communication between folk clubs and their guest artists and ways in which parties can enhance the experience of the guest night for all by reducing any confusion through poor information. Many thanks for the positive and lively discussion about communication between artist and venue.

As we discussed, clubs may find that there are certain points here that aren’t relevant to them but this is a gathering of shared ideas and there may be some points here that could work for you. Some clubs use booking policies on their website or email/post contracts. Perhaps there are some useful ideas to support this method?

From a personal point of view, I started booking for The Greenwood with no knowledge of professional business skills just knowing that I wanted to play some shows. It’s fair enough learning the hard way the things that you needed to find out from promoters or the things that 'it’s okay' to ask but if Folk 21 can lend some support to those starting out or those whose forté isn’t the business side then that can only be a positive!

Telephone conversations, Facebook or face-to-face conversations would benefit from an official follow up and a pre-gig follow up to help prevent human error/double bookings. If you’re not a fan of email then a written letter/posted contract would work too. 

I think this kind of open communication from the very start promotes a stronger working relationship between the venue and the artist/booking agent. It provides the opportunity for discussion and resolution of any issues in a preemptive and positive manner giving both sides the chance to resolve any problems that may need solving and the prevention of any issues that may have otherwise occurred.

At last month’s regional meeting I presented a ‘template’ of information that should ideally be established between club and artist prior to the night of the booking. We developed it further after discussion and it would be useful for Folk 21 to know what examples other artists and/or clubs already use, any that aren’t relevant to you and, most importantly, anything else we could add to it.

Thanks,

Kim

Template suggestions so far:

·     Artist / band full name - correct spelling

·     Confirmation of official booking date

·     Load in time

·     Sound check time

·     Doors open

·     Address of venue - postcode for sat nav

·     Travel directions 

·     Car parking & access

·     Exact location of folk club e.g. upstairs room, function room at the back etc.

·     Emergency contact details

·     Who will be there to meet the guest

·     Name of support artist if / when known or floor spots

·     Confirmation of fee / expenses agreement

·     Confirmation of set length

·     Ticket prices - concessions? 

·     PA provided / required / no PA (flexibility on this)

·     Technical requirements

·     Social media links & website link

·     Any extra info - no food outlets nearby, stairs etc.

·     Flyers / posters required pre-gig?

·     Press kit - bio, photos

·     Are guests allowed?

Headline Folk

(or How To Get Journalists to Love Your Folk Club)

Frustrated by the lack of interest in your folk club by the local press – or other news media for that matter? At the recent Folk21 West Midlands regional meeting, Pete Willow drew on his 30+ years’ experience of writing the folk column for the Coventry Telegraph to offer a 20-point guide on how to increase your chances of positive media coverage. Here’s what he told us…

I’m about to give you 20 hot tips on how to increase your chances of getting good press coverage for your folk club. But before we look at any of them, I would like to share one fundamental piece of advice.

Have pity on the poor press reporter.

You may not feel inclined to, especially if your local newspaper has studiously ignored your emails and avoided publishing any feature articles with screaming headlines or even a 2-liner ‘late news’ item about the amazing guests appearing at your folk club. But journalists, especially regional press reporters are having a tough time.

Circulation of local papers have fallen considerably. In the 1950s, my local publication, the Coventry Evening Telegraph sold 100,000 copies a day. Recent years have seen Coventry Telegraph sales decline by 10-15% a year and it currently only musters a circulation of 18,000. Its parent company Trinity Mirror can no longer afford large newsrooms populated by wannabe John Pilgers, or even external folk music correspondents (my fee was a princely £35 per week!). Meanwhile, those young, overworked, relatively inexperienced hacks remaining in the newsroom have to work harder to fill the same number of column centimetres with scintillating copy that drips with drama and exclusivity. It’s a tough call.

Don’t be tempted into thinking that falling circulations make local newspapers irrelevant. People still read them, especially older people who are more likely to attend your folk club. And local newspapers still try to present themselves as the voice of their community, something that your venue definitely needs to be part of.

Bearing these points in mind, you are in a position to make life easier for your poor, hard-pressed local newshounds. You can achieve this by doing their job for them as much as possible. The less effort needed for the journalist to report on your club, the more likely you are to get coverage.

Which leads me to my first hot tip:

1. Give them a story, not a plug.

Your local newspaper is not a noticeboard for you to pin up your posters. If you simply want to advertise they’ll expect you to pay. It’s of little interest to the local Argus and most readers of its news pages that a singer-songwriter and Joni Mitchell soundalike is your next guest act. They need something more gripping.

2. Give them a hook on which to hang the story.

They might be more interested if your guest is making a one-off appearance at your club after a sell-out tour of Europe (two well-attended gigs in Belgium?). Or that the gig aims to raise cash for a worthy cause within the community. Or that the resident band has been approached to represent Great Britain in Eurovision.

Here’s your chance to be creative without resorting to the current trend of ‘alternative facts’. If there isn’t an obvious hook, dig for ideas. Has your guest released a new CD? Is the club attracting more young floor singers? Has a former floor singer made it big? Has the club sold its 1000^th ticket? What’s biggest, newest, latest about your club? Look for the hook.

Once you have a story, you need to tell it to the journalist. Hence…

3. Press releases are still popular with journalists.

Now that we’ve had the digital revolution, we often hear the claim that the press release is dead. It isn’t. Its format may vary but as long as it tells the story simply and clearly without the need for too much editing – or any at all – journalists will be more likely to use it. Don’t send flyers or posters. Show them you’ve made the effort to talk in their language.

When writing your press release…

4. Leave clever headlines to the experts.

In this case, the experts are the sub-editors and they often take pride in the clever use of puns, alliteration, cliché or other eye-catching rhetorical device to grab their readers’ attention. Your job is to grab the sub-editor’s attention. So keep it very simple – ‘Award-winning folk act to appear in Upper Munchley’, ‘Folk club MC to appear on Big Brother’, or whatever.

5. Tell the story simply

The standard textbook advice in press release writing is to answer the five Ws:

•         What’s happening?

•         Who’s involved?

•         Where?

•         When?

•         Why?

These questions need to be answered in the first couple of sentences. Busy journalists have a short attention span and if you can’t capture their interest from the start, the story will get ‘spiked’ or transferred to the trash. 

Newspaper narrative usually starts with the basic facts so that it is possible to get the main sense of the story from the beginning. As the story progresses it offers more and more detail (background, quotes, and so on) which becomes less and less essential, making it easier for an editor to lop off the last two paragraphs if necessary without having to rewrite the entire item.

The only variation I would suggest from the textbooks is to ensure that the first sentence offers some intrigue, opening up a question that can only be answered by reading further. This is usually achieved by offering a ‘factoid’ statement that needs context for it to make sense. For example:

Melbourne’s celebrated singer, songwriter and poet, Ian Bland can’t get enough of Coventry. 
(OK that’s the Who question. But intrigued – why should a singer from Melbourne be so enamoured with Coventry?)

After flying back to Australia after an extensive tour of local folk venues last winter, Ian was back within six months to perform at the Warwick Folk Festival and plays his final UK gig tonight – at least for this year. 
(That’s the What, When and Why questions dealt with.) 

Catch him at the Nursery Tavern in Lord Street, Chapelfields for an evening of lively songs and stories interspersed with his wry sense of observational humour.
(And that’s the Where – with a bit more What.)

With over 30 years’ experience of performing, Ian is known for his relaxed and engaging style and has established himself as a powerful force in the Melbourne music scene… 
(And so on, the item now fills in background to add colour to the story and already comes across as an item that is definitely NEWS rather than a plug.)

Moving on…

6. Give them some interesting quotes.

Quotations add a human touch to the story and if you provide a quote they can help create the impression that the busy journalist has actually taken the trouble to interview someone. 

They can be a bit of a cliché however. In the world of newspaper quotes, everyone is ‘delighted’ to be appearing, visiting the area, welcoming the guest, and so on. The world is a delightful place! Clichés are OK in small doses but they can be too much of a good thing. (See what I did there?)

Now, here’s a practical tip about your press release…

7. Make it easy to copy and paste.

A lot of local press journalism is licensed plagiarism. Busy journalists aren’t going to rewrite your story if they can simply copy it and place it under a headline, often with their own by-line! No-one minds – the story is in the newspaper and the world knows about what’s happening at your club. 

This is less likely to happen if your press release document is an older version of a pdf file containing text that can’t be copied. Don’t take chances. Send them a simple Word document, or – if your press release forms part of an online press kit on your club’s website – make sure that the text can be highlighted.

8. Give them a well-composed photograph

This can make all the difference between a few lines squeezed into page 36 or the leading story in the Entertainments section of the paper. A good eye-catching photograph makes their newspaper look interesting and can also fit in with the design and style of the publication.

These are examples that I like:

Perhaps more of an Arts Centre act than folk club guest, this image of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is wonderfully quirky, intriguing and generally engaging, projecting a lot of character.

This is also full of personality and the composition allows for an interesting page layout; the space to the right of Billy Bragg’s face could be used to superimpose a headline.

Perhaps over-the-top Photoshop, but you can’t fail to notice this image of Lucy Ward with its extravagant use of colour and juxtaposition of unrelated objects (knitting wool, blue hair and a raincloud). It offers a new and lively image of folk music and it even incorporates her name!

Again a practical point…

9. Give them a high resolution photograph.

Low-res images will limit the editor’s options and will appear as postage stamp size at best. Also, avoid monochrome – newspapers prefer colour. And avoid poorly composed amateur smartphone snapshots which only show the backs of audiences or present the artists with clutter behind them and microphones up their noses. 

Remember, this is all about making life easier for busy journalists and photographs that need lots of editing are a waste of your time and theirs.

10. Give them time to work on your story.

Be aware of deadlines. Special feature sections of daily titles usually need copy and photos to be on the newsdesk at least 4-5 days before publication. Weekly publications usually prefer around 10 days notice. If you are not sure of deadlines, phone the newsroom and ask. 

Don’t expect journalists to drop everything to run your story on the day before the event happens. They’ll appreciate you a lot more as a source if you give them an opportunity to work with your material. But beware – copy sent too early risks disappearing to the bottom of the inbox.

Here are some tips on courtesy and successful interaction with journalists…

11. Target your information to a named journalist.

Do some research and find out who is most likely to work on your story. Or again phone and ask for a name. Unsolicited emails to ‘the Editor’ are likely to get shunted around the newsroom with no-one taking ownership of the story.

And if there are rival publications in your area…

12. Offer different angles to different news media.

Sending out identical press releases and photos could be counterproductive if one local newspaper wants to have the edge on the other. If you can’t come up with a different news angle, at least send out a different photo to give each title the opportunity of some level of exclusivity.

13. Give them contact details that actually work.

Press releases must always have contact details and there is nothing more annoying for a newsdesk reporter than trying and failing to make contact with the source of the story. 

Check emails frequently and respond immediately. But preferably, give a phone number and make sure that any return call is answered by you and not your voicemail. News reporters tend to phone first when following up a story as they are working against tight deadlines and looking for instant responses. There’s a risk that journalists waiting for email responses will give up the will to live – or at least to run your story.

And on the theme of exclusivity…

14. Offer them a chance to interview.

Journalists probably won’t take this chance, unless your guest act is very very famous, but at least there’s an opportunity here for them to construct their own story based on their own questions and genuine quotable answers. It is relatively simple to set up a telephone interview with your guest even if they are on tour. If you have booked them through an agent, they should be able to set an interview up for you.

15. Offer incentives.

Newspaper editors would love a free holiday for two in your villa in the Algarve but that’s not the type of incentive I’m talking about. Journalists are more encouraged if your press release is well-written, timely and newsy. They may even be interested in running a competition if you provide the prizes.

Of course, a CD by your resident band, a couple of free tickets for the club and, perhaps, a bottle of wine with a Christmas card may be gratefully received as a token of your good faith in the powers of journalism.

One good incentive is to …

16. Keep the stories flowing.

Journalists who see you as a regular and reliable source of news are more likely to work with you. Once you are on their radar and in their contacts book, they may well offer further chances of media exposure, for example by inviting you to comment on a wider folk-related story. So be ready to offer quotable opinions on the rise and fall of local pubs, craft breweries or the nefarious practice of morris dancers blacking up.

17. Offer background information.

This again relates to exclusivity. If your friendly journalist is willing to put the time in, he or she could build a story around your press release by adding further information about your guest act or venue. Offering background information, often in the form of easy-to-digest factoid bullet points, increases the chance of making the story interesting and original without the need of too much effort in research.

18. Do not divert them to a rubbish website.

Here are some characteristics of websites that do more harm than good in establishing rapport with your reporter:

• The background information on the guest band is full of esoteric claptrap about how they used their music to ‘find themselves’ and achieve a transcendent connection with their inner spirits. Stick to the basic facts: names of band members, what they play and the release date of the latest CD - stuff like that.
• The photographs cannot be downloaded
• The information is out of date
• The site is difficult to navigate
• The press release is only available as a downloadable pdf document or (even worse) a jpg scan. Yes I have seen press releases in this format and I can vouch that they are utterly useless for the journalist.

19. Make friends with journalists.

This goes back to the point about Christmas cards and wine but generally first-name terms are always good. Journalists are more likely to take notice if they can put a face to your name or, at least, recognise your voice on the phone. Once they know you are a normal human being and not a stereotypical pot-bellied, beer-swilling, finger-in-ear folkie (yes journalists are prone to stereotypes), they are more likely to interact happily with you.

And when they are looking for a good story, they become a friend in need.

Of course friends like to be appreciated, so every now and then, so…

20. Thank them for running the story.

Even if they only gave you a short paragraph and spelt your name wrong, grit your teeth and say the magic word.

To conclude, the essence of successful media relations is a combination of

•           An appeal to news value
•           Offering something new
•           Making life easy for journalists
•           Creating or spotting the opportunity for a good story.

If you were simply an advertiser, paying for space in the paper, you may have better control of how the information is presented but at the end of the day, readers will know it is just an ad. To be more credible, you have to take the risk and trust the journalist to run a story based on the information you supply.

The better the information – and the easier it is for the journalist to process – the more chance you have that he or she will love you and write an excellent story about your club.

It’s a win-win-win situation: the journalist has a good story, your club has more visibility in your community and the reputation of folk music generally is a little bit more enhanced.